Opening Weekend Recap

In order to have the draft run smoothly last weekend and to try to be efficient with our time, I didn't raise the issue of teams keeping major league players with Mx contracts on their Reserve List.

But I do want to address the matter as there are impacts that may not be obvious.

To begin, the Constitution can be interpreted that a team with an Mx player still in major league camp can/may reserve that player and if that player makes the Opening Day roster the CFCL team simply could not trade or activate that player until July 1st.

We're going to clean up that language because it is inconsistent with the intent of the wording.  Every owner in the league has had AT LEAST three years of experience with Mx players still in major league camp as of Roster Freeze Day.  For some reason this year at least five owners believed that they were SUPPOSED to reserve (or stash in some of their words) the players on their reserve list with the only consequence being the July 1st restriction.

For years, for years . . . . for years the explanation (beginning with Commissioner and Owner Emeritus Mahlan) has been that once the previous season ends ALL PLAYERS are considered to be on a team's ACTIVE ROSTER.  Come Roster Freeze Day, CFCL owners need to point to a viable reason for a player to be placed on the Reserve List.  Basically there are two viable reasons.

1)  A player was placed on the Injured List by their National League team;
2)  A player was demoted to the minors.

That's it.  Everyone else is active.  But this year we had five teams wanting to reserve guys who had no right to be reserved as of Roster Freeze Day.  As it turns out, by Draft Day we had two (possibly three, I forget the timeline) teams with players on their reserve list that should have been active.

I'm not picking on owners, this is simply the facts.  The Sombreros had three players on their reserve list make their National League team's Opening Day Roster.  The Killers had one.

So they cannot activate or trade those players until July 1st.  End of story, right?  Not exactly.  The ramifications run a little deeper.

1)  Both teams kept the maximum 15 on their Active Roster heading into the draft.  So in effect the Killers were allowed to keep 16 major league players on their roster and the Sombreros 18 (!!).  That is an unfair advantage over the remaining eight teams who only kept a maximum of 15.

2)  Had we drafted this past weekend (AFTER Opening Day), what would have happened?  Well aside from no one drafting any Cub starting pitching, the Killers and Sombreros would have had to either cut the guys they kept on their reserve list or cut one (for the Killers) and THREE (for the Sombreros) from their Active Roster, thereby making four more player eligible to be drafted.

Had they chosen to keep their coveted Mx players (making them active and jettisoning someone from their Active roster, that would mean the presumed 15th best player from last year's 4th place team would have been available and the 13th, 14th and 15th best players from last year's CHAMPION team would have been available.

3)  The "punishment" or consequence for "guessing" whether these players were going to make their National League roster is they can't be activated until July 1st.  True.  But that means on July 1st, when the trade deadline is looming, they essentially will have made trades to acquire four (half) seasoned, major league experienced players and it will have cost them nothing in return.

I'm willing to own some of the responsibility on this.  Every year, Commissioner Mahlan would post here at the Front Office the Draft Prep Post wherein, among much other information, he would remind owners how to handle Mx players.

I used to do that too.  This year, I chose not to.  I was dealing with other league things that were sucking the life out of me, busy with non-CFCL life things and I thought "This year I'm not going to hold everyone's hands and remind them of something they've been told for over ten years."

The first few times my parents would remind me to brush my teeth and then after that they didn't any more.  Not because I didn't need to brush my teeth, but because I knew what I was supposed to do and I needed to do it on my own.

As I mentioned earlier, I am not intending to pick on the Killers and Sombreros.  There were five owners who submitted cuts with Mx players in Major League camp on Roster Freeze Day.  It just turns out, the other three owners had their players sent to the minors prior to Opening Day and, I think, prior even to Draft Day so it didn't negatively impact the talent that could have been available to draft from.

We have two ways to solve this.  One is to always draft AFTER Opening Day.  That way there's no question who made the Opening Day roster.  The other is to clean up the language in the Constitution so that there is absolutely no confusion that if a player is in camp on Roster Freeze Day, he is either kept on the CFCL team's Active Roster OR he is released into the Free Agent Pool, available to be drafted on Draft Day.

I'm thinking we'll probably do the latter since our league has historically preferred to draft prior to Opening Day.